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The Vikings lands were covered with mountains, fjords, river, lakes and islands. So the Vikings have to know how to make ship and boat, that is essential for warfare, trade and exploration. Therefore, Vikings were all skilled sailor and shipbuilders.6 When the winter ended, in April, the men began to build or repair their ships. Most boats were made from oak and had the same basic form. The Vikings build different types of boat and ships for different purpose. Example is canoes, fishing boats, ferries and knorrs for trading and, finest of all, the Viking war ship. Archaeologist found that Viking ship that had been deliberately buried, even though it is over a thousand years old. Some of the main ship such as Oseberg ship, Gokstad ship is on display at the Vikings ships museum in Norway. The war ships were called longships or dragon ships, because they were long and had a dragon's head carved on the front. The Vikings carve dragon's heads in their ships to scare on their enemies. It must have looked frightening to see a pair of wild eyes and snarling teeth looming out of the fog. The longships were so fast, they cut through the water like knifes and they were very shallow. It would carry between 20 and 60 Viking warriors each with his own weapons and shield. The Long Serpent, a famous longship that belonged to King Olaf Tryggvason of Norway, was 120 feet (37 meters) long.7.
At the sea, the Vikings had lots of different ways to determined where they were and which direction to travel in. Because they didn't have maps, they looked at the position of the sun and the stars. They looked at the color of the sea, the way the waves were moving and the way the wind was blowing. They looked out for birds and could smell if they were near land. Some Vikings used an instrument called a sun-shadow board to help them to navigate. "A traveller without observation is a bird without wings."―Moslih Eddin Saadi8.